CHAPTER I

T

CHILDHOOD

HE importance of (c) infantile Christianity is neither understood nor appreciated, to the seri

ous detriment of the rising generation. Oh what a sunburst on the Church would the Bible information on this subject prove to be, if it were only brought into availability by parents, teachers, and preachers (Heb. 2:9), "By the grace of God, Christ tasted death for everyone," not "every man" as in the English version, but the Greek pantos literally means every human being, and, consequently, the vicarious, substitutionary atonement comes into gracious availability the very moment soul and body united, constitute personality, which is far back in the pre-natal state, five or six months antecedently to the physical birth, superinducing the glorious and triumphant reality that every human being is born a Christian, whether in a brothel, a camp-meeting, an army barracks, or a godly home. The moment soul and body united constitute personality, our blessed heavenly Father for the sake of Christ alone freely justifies that soul, and the Holy Spirit instantaneously administers His new creation, raising it from the dead, as every one is generated in Adam the first, our fallen federal head, spiritually dead and utterly unfit for heaven, full of de

pravity which congenializes the soul to the devil and the society of the bottomless pit; (d) but our wonderful, omnipotent Christ makes the triumphant run on Satan, capturing with his Gospel lasso every human being the very moment fetality is metamorphosed into personality and that beautiful scripture huper pantos comes into victorious availability. George Whitefield, born in a brothel, with no father to care for him, the very next door to hell, actually became the greatest preacher the world has known since Paul lost his head at Nero's block. He crossed the Atlantic seventeen times, holding the English speaking world in both continents spellbound, in England, never using a house, but standing on a scaffold in a ten-acre field, while his trumpet voice reached fifty thousand, so supernaturally affected by the Gospel dynamite as to fall on the ground, pray through, and shout the victory on all sides, meanwhile his Herculean lung-power edified them with a two-hour sermon, successfully reaching that immense multitude, in the providence of God finally winding up his brilliant career in the New World, and this day his body sleeps in a Baptist churchyard at the mouth of the Merrimac River in Massachusetts.

(e) My amanuensis interrogates me, "At what date did he live?" He was a contemporary of John Wesley, both preaching side by side during their long and victorious lives; Wesley the great theologian, but Whitefield the wonderful preacher, never blest with a collegiate education as was his learned comrade. Oh what an easy matter it would be to get all the children intelligently converted if we only began in time,—

i. e., before the forfeiture of infantile justification by personal transgression, which the old theologians recognized at the age of seven, coming into accountability;. but we can not assign any definite period because it depends altogether on the amount of light they have in the home; of course the brighter the light the sooner the discrimination between right and wrong supervenes. We have great consolation in our infantile evangelistic work, of which we should all be efficient participants, and that is that they are easily converted. and easily robbed of their experience by the enemy, but we should be always at our post doing our utmost. to lead the little ones to the Saviour, teaching them to pray and to seek Him intelligently till they really get happily converted.

(f) When conversion takes place antecedently to accountability, as it did with the prophet Samuel, Samson, John the Baptist, the Apostle Timothy, your humble servant, and multitudes whose names are in the Book of Life, it is not anticipated by conviction of sin, which has never been committed, and consequently we have nothing to do, but turn the little one around, introduce it to God, teach it to pray and appreciate its acquaintance with Him, so it will get happy, and, likeadults, enjoy the inward bliss of regenerating grace and power, and thus verify the primary meaning of conversion, which simply means turning around, as the depravity, gendered in every human spirit by heredity from fallen Adam, our federal head (1 Cor. 15:22), "In Adam all die, but in Christ shall all be made alive," so here you see in that same verse the great.

fundamental truth of heredity from fallen Adam generating every soul spiritually dead, but our wonderful, omnipotent Christ, the very moment it enters personality, lassoes it with His triumphant redemption, turning it squarely around so it is born into the world, not a child of the devil, but an heir of grace, as we see abundantly confirmed in case of the prodigal son and his senior brother, both born in the father's house,— i. e., the kingdom of God, and the latter having the good fortune to get turned around and introduced to the father, so that he started out in life graceward, Godward, and heavenward; whereas his junior brother, though born in the father's house went the other way, as every human being comes into the world with the face turned toward sin, the wicked world with its allurements and fascinations, Satan's bait to lead us so near the cataract of damnation as to find the impetus incorrigible and hell the inevitable doom.

(g) You see in the so-called conversion of the prodigal, the simple confirmation of the fact in every other case that the popular conversion is only a reclamation back to the infantile justification, enjoyed by every human being in the home of our heavenly Father, till we reach accountability, violate His commandment, and wander away after the ignis fatuus whose delusive ray lights up unreal worlds and glows but to betray, as we see in the hackneyed confession of the teeming millions,

"When young, life's journey I began,

The glittering prospect charmed my eyes,

I saw along the extended plain,
Joy after joy successive rise;
But soon I found 'twas all a dream,
And learned the fond pursuit to shun,
Where few can reach their purposed aim
And thousands daily are undone.”

(h) Why do you call the prodigal converted? Because he was so fortunate as to get back to his father's house. You know he was born there, and his elder brother, as the normal result of the infantile conversion, had never gotten away, but was there fat and flourishing. Instead of having spent his patrimony, as his junior brother had done, he had wonderfully augmented it and become a millionaire, while his rescued brother was at the opposite pole of the financial battery, as he had lost every penny, and so delighted that he did not lose his soul.

(i) While children are easily converted, as compared with adults, they are also easily upset by the enemy, as is brilliantly illustrated in our "shantytown" in the slums of this city, where an elect sister labored with great success a number of years; the blessed Holy Spirit marvelously using her in the conversion and sanctification of the poor little ones,~they gathered in vast numbers in that noble philanthropy.

(j) I heard her say that she made it a rule in every session of the Sunday-school to have an altar service for the conversion of penitents, the sanctification of believers, and the reclamation of backsliders, observing that on one occasion she was surprised to see a lit